20010825

Some aspects are getting a little too complicated and others are drastically oversimplified, and the language as a whole is losing a bit of the flair I set out to achieve to begin with. There are a few sounds i have to add and a few that have to be gotten rid of. The definite article and demonstrative pronouns have to either become separable, change form, or just shrivel up and blow away, because it seems redundant to have more than one suffix on a word. The language as a whole has gotten far too a priori to the point that it is difficult to expand the vocabulary. The entire point, however, is that the language be as a priori as possible, but i’m thinking i need to start stealing some words or at least some sounds, because just sitting there thinking up new and exciting words is too exhausting. The alphabet has to go, because as cute as it is, the original runes were far too un-malt§égj-looking (they had a sort of korean cuneiform feel to them), and the later accepted runes which i’ve been using for malt§égj for the last few months are just tacky and awkward and wrong. And that whole vowel diacritic thing, which i like in theory, is really obnoxious in practice. Some of the words that do exist are far too complicated, and i have to get over this predilection for putting as many consonants together as i can without the aid of a vowel. The actual sound i would like to hear from Malt§égj is somewhat akin to that of welsh, only without that dreadful ll sound they have, and with a little more regularity of y’s and u’s. Or perhaps a little like russian, only with a few more vowels and some simpler words. I’ve even thought of adding in mutations, but i need to simplify the language quite a bit before i start re-complicating it.

The best way i can think of to perform this revision is to start over at the beginning and weed out what i don’t want, change what i don’t like, and then add new concepts once i get a firm idea of what i actually have here.

So from the beginning...
As, ul cwarco...

In those words alone i’ve modified quite a bit. First of all, let’s try the definite article as separate words before the noun for the time being, while i decide if i want to keep them at all.

Articles

Articles precede the noun they modify, as do numerals and demonstrative adjectives. All other adjectives will follow the noun. Nice little switch there, eh?

ul

the (definite article)

am

a, an, one (indefinite article)

uli

this

ula

that (i didn’t like ulo)

ulot

the other (cf. aquello in spanish)

This will also help to standardize the relationship between these and words like calc and mlăc.

Going back a step further...

Orthography

The orthography of the malt§égj langauge has gotten totally out of hand. And then some! It’s just like Mr. Fiedler always said, “Simplify and clarify.” So let’s revisit the actual sounds we use and then think about how we want to represent them.

b

v

d

z

g

ʒ

ð

γ

voiced consonants

p

f

t

s

k

ʃ

θ

x

unvoiced consonants

m

n

l

r

nasals and liquids

a

ɔ

o

u

i

ε

ɪ

vowels

w

j

h

glides and aspirants

For the time being, until a really cool idea for an alphabet comes to me that isn’t farcically complicated or otherwise unmanageable, a simple latin orthography is going to have to do. Since the sounds depicted above are rather clinical-looking, the following will be our new orthography:

b

v

d

z

g

ʒ

ð

ɤ

p

f

t

s

c

§

þ

x

m

n

l

r

a

ơ

o

u

i

e

y

ε

w

j

h

That seems æsthetic enough for me for the moment. I probably won’t be using the ɤ or the h, since they were only add-ins to balance out my little aleph rune anyway, which has gone the way of the dodo. I’m not sure why i chose the ơ to replace the ɔ sound; i think it might be partly because i just happen to like it and partly because the unicode standard contains grave and acute accents for this character, which brings me to my next point.

One of the things about the former orthography that i particularly did like was the addition of acute and grave diacritics to indicate stress. And given the non-standard stress of the language, these become quite necessary elements for pronunciation. So that rule will continue: In words of more than one syllable, an acute accent will indicate the stress; in words of more than two syllables a grave accent will indicate a secondary stress unless the middle syllable of a trisyllabic word is primarily stressed.

I would also like to add another vowel, if i may. (Of course i may—it’s my bloody language; i’ll do with it as i please!) I would like a definite distinction between e and ε. So i suppose i’ll have to use ε for now, and if i can’t find a decent looking diacritic for it i’ll just have to create one! Generally speaking, however, an e appearing at the end of a word will keep the e sound, while most others, with a few exceptions, will be ε. I’m also toying with the idea of adding additional vowels for ə or ʌ, oe, and maybe ʉ, but all in good time. I am afraid they might detract from the desired sound of the language.

As far as adding the aleph character to unsupported vowels, as i already mentioned that is now a thing of the past. All characters will be supported on their own in a latin-based context anyway.

All in all not a bad transition, and much more reader-friendly!
The next revision i would like to make is with word order. Again i’m leaning toward the celtic languages here, although that is not my intention. I would like to instate a strict VSO order on this language. Or even VOS, as long as the verb is at the beginning. That way i can still have my nice little –a. ending for direct objects, but i really do like the feel of a VSO sentence. At first i was turned off by this trait in a language because it made me think of Yoda, but now i rather like it. I think this may actually be a subconscious lashing-out at german and all the hours i’ve spent reading on and on trying to find the end of the sentence just so i could find the verb and discover what was actually going on. I mean, seriously, folks, take the following sentence from Heinrich von Kleist:

I mean, as far as cramming a lot of information into a simple sentence, Kleist was the master, but that’s just ridiculous. Note that i’ve highlighted the subject and primary verbs of the sentence, and they’re not exactly next of kin.